Update at 6:20 p.m.: A mistrial has been declared in the capital murder trial of Daniel Ramsour, who was accused in the fatal shooting in a Frisco Wal-Mart parking lot in 2011.

District Judge Chris Oldner told jurors that through no fault of their own they saw evidence that had not been admitted at trial.

“Because the court is unable to undo the error, it is necessary for the court to grant a mistrial,” Oldner said.

A new trial date will be set.

Updated at 6 p.m. The presiding juror told the court that some jurors viewed all of one DVD and a portion of the second DVD before the bailiff asked for it back. It’s not clear how many jurors saw the police interviews that weren’t allowed into evidence.

The jurors have returned to deliberations.

Defense attorney Bill Schulz has asked for a mistrial. Prosecutor Zeke Fortenberry objected, asking that the jurors be polled to determine whether they can set aside what they saw and base their verdict only on the evidence in the case.

Judge Chris Oldner said the jurors getting the DVDs was a simple mistake after the regular court reporter in the case had a family emergency and a substitute court reporter was called in to finish the trial. The DVDs were labeled for evidence in Raymond Washington’s trial back in May and there was nothing to distinguish the exhibits from May with the exhibits in this trial.

Oldner is back in chambers viewing the first DVD to see what evidence jurors heard that they should not have. He has not yet ruled on the defense motion for a mistrial.

Updated at 5:15 p.m.: This week-long trial may end up without a verdict. Attorneys are discussing their options after discovering the jury has seen evidence that it shouldn’t have.

Jurors passed two notes to the bailiff at 4:15 p.m., one asking if there was a DVD of Daniel Ramsour’s police interview in Beaumont and the second asking about whether they should consider two other DVDs from Raymond Washington’s interview with police as evidence. The problem is those two DVDs sent back to the jury room were not introduced at trial and should not have been sent to the jury room. They include exculpatory statements about Washington and implicate Ramsour, according to District Judge Chris Oldner.

The bailiff who retrieved the DVDs said a juror pulled one of the DVDs out of the laptop when he asked for them back. What’s unclear is how much of the interviews on the DVDs that the jurors have seen.

Oldner said he didn’t know how those DVDs ended up in jurors’ hands. He told attorneys that one option would be to instruct the jurors to ignore anything they saw on the DVDs. But some statements on the DVDs could be hard to forget.

Daniel Ramsour, 20, is accused of capital murder in the death of 30-year-old Andre Currier. If convicted of capital murder, he faces up to life in prison.

The seven-woman, five-man jury also has the option of convicting Ramsour on lesser charges of murder or aggravated robbery or robbery. Deliberations began just before 12:30 p.m., after nearly three hours of closing arguments.

“His character is so base that telling a lie to get out of trouble is not far off,” defense attorney Bill Shultz said.

The defense also tried to cast doubt on the Frisco police investigation, noting that Snider has not been charged despite evidence of criminal activity.

Why didn’t they charge him? he asked. “They didn’t because they were buying his testimony,” Schultz told the jury.

But prosecutor Zeke Fortenberry told jurors that the defense’s strategy of focusing on Snider’s character was meant to distract them. Fortenberry said Snider’s version of what happened that day is corroborated by the text messages from multiple cell phones, the video surveillance at Wal-Mart and the evidence recovered from the crime scene.

“You can call Nelson Snider a lot of things – a criminal, a burglar, a drug addict – but about the events of June 1, 2011, he is not a liar,” Fortenberry said.

Currier had planned to sell one pound of high-grade marijuana for nearly $5,000. Evidence showed that Ramsour and his co-defendant, Raymond Washington brought weapons but no money to the drug deal set up by Snider.

Text messages show Ramsour got a gun before the deal was set up. Washington’s girlfriend, Tiara Williams, testified that she saw that gun as she drove Ramsour part-way to the deal. She also testified that she heard him talking on his phone about hitting a lick, which jurors were told meant doing a robbery.

Snider told jurors Currier was sitting in the driver’s seat of his Mercedes while Snider was sitting in the passenger seat. Ramsour was sitting in the back seat, Snider told jurors. Washington had gone inside the Wal-Mart under the ruse of getting money. While he’s gone, the other three get out a scale and are weighing the marijuana. Ramsour’s fingerprint was found on the scale recovered from inside the Mercedes.

Washington returns to the car and pull out a large knife, which was later recovered from his car. Ramsour pulls his gun. Snider told jurors Currier put his hands up. Currier was shot three times. One shot through his wrist and another through his rib cage suggest his hands were raised at the time of the shooting, Fortenberry said.

Snider testified that Ramsour jumped out of Currier’s car, and he and Washington drove off in Washington’s car. Three fingerprints belonging to Ramsour were found on the back passenger door of Currier’s Mercedes.

Snider told jurors he moved Currier to the passenger seat and drove the Mercedes around for a few minutes looking for a hospital but soon returned to the Wal-Mart. He left Currier in the car and ran off through the store and out the back door into the nearby neighborhood. He returned hours later to talk with Frisco police. Washington and Ramsour were arrested later at the Beaumont home of Ramsour’s aunt.

Washington was convicted in May of murder and sentenced to 33 years in prison.

The fact that the victim in this case was a drug dealer shouldn’t affect the verdict, Fortenberry told jurors. “Andre Currier didn’t deserve to die,” he said.

He then looked at Ramsour and said, “Today is the day the jury is going to tell you you’re guilty of capital murder.”

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